Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1887-10-28
ROOM FOR MILLIONS.
| The Inexhaustible Agricultural Resources
of the Brazilian Empire.

The Inexhaustib1e Agricultural Resources
of the Brazilian Empire.
After the Portuguese the Germans
are the most numerous immigrants in
Brazil; then Spaniards, mostly Gallo
ians and Galatians; many Italians,
French, Swiss and English settlers, and
few Americans from the Southern
States who have not generally been
successful in regaining foStunes lost in
the last war. Germany sends every
year thousands of hardy settlers, who
till the land and develop the agricul-
tural resources of the country. In for
mer years most of the Europeans. es-
pecally the Germans, settled in the
northern part of the Empire, where
they persisted miserably, either from
the severity of the climate or from
malarial fevers. Other causes of fail
ure were the want of roads and the
neglect to bring supplies for the colo
nists, and in many cases the dishonesty
or the neglect of the companies under
whose direction the colonists arrived,
and, perhaps not the least, the hostility
VI thC JU~CbttcC 20, Nhot ~ 10 ottiN's
number about 5000 and own one-half
of Brazil. This estimate would give
each proprietor about $50 square miles
of land, territory extending over hill
and dale, forest and plain, beyond the
reach even of the eagles eye.
Thus it has ever been that Europe
has been drained of her hardy and in
dustrious inhabitants in the vain Mt
tempts to establish permanent settle
ments within the tropical regions of the
East and West Indies, of Asia and of
Africa. Since the tide of immigration
vinces the rate of increase from foreign
sources has been from two hundred
to two hundred and fifty thou
sand yearly. 1t is estimated that
from natural increase the population
doubles every twenty-five to thirty
years. because in the thicklv settled
districts the soil is fertile, the climate
mild and healthy, and free from cpl
denies of yellow fever, which are Sc
we're only on the coast. If Brazil were
as densely populated as Holland, or
even as Great Britain, it would contain
more than thousand million of inhab-
itants, which number it could easily
support, for it has not foot of desert
and the portions of its surface with
drawn from cultivation would be the
surface of its vast water courses.
The country now realizes the fact
that her wealth lies in her fazendas,
| covered with vines, plantations of to-
| bacco, coffee, cotton and sugar cane;
her fields of grain, corn and rice; in her
medicinal plants and dye-woods; in a
word, in all the productions of the
temperate and tropical climates, rather
than in her mines, however rich. These
will form the articles of future export,
and will cause her commercial cities,
as Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco
and others on the Atlantic, and great
oenters yet to be founded on her mighty
rivers, to increase in population and in
wealth. All her cities now in existence
are on the coast, and form what might
well be called the commercial zone.
| Rio de Janeiro has an estimated popu-
lation of 546,393 1t is situated almost
under the southern tropic, with the
latitude of Jamaica, but a much milder
climate. A spacious channel affords a
safe entrance to, perhaps, the finest
harbor in the world, small inland sea
separated from the ocean by Mount
Gavia and the lofty peaks of the Tijuaca.
more than two thousand feet high, and
Corcovado, three thousand feet. 1t is
more than one hundred miles in eircum-
ference and without exaggeration would
afford shelter to all the navies and
merchant ships in both hemispheres. :
| Sdnitdridn.